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BIG PHYSICS, BIG QUESTIONS –

Stricter rules will thwart Japan’s whaling attempts

JAPAN’S plan to restart its whaling programme just got harpooned. From now on it will have to work much harder to convince the world that its “scientific whaling” should be allowed to continue.

That’s the upshot of a resolution passed last week at the biennial meeting of the International Whaling Commission in Portoroz, Slovenia. The IWC banned commercial whaling in 1986, but countries can apply for exemptions if they are taking whales for research purposes. Japan has long continued killing whales on those grounds, but conservationists believe this is a front for commercial whaling.

Proposed by New Zealand, and passed by 35 votes to 20, the new resolution will enforce much stricter criteria on any application to conduct whaling for research. It reinforces a March ruling by the International Court of Justice that Japan’s scientific whaling programme in Antarctica between 2005 and 2014 was illegal.

In future, Japan will need to convince the IWC that any whaling programme is “reasonable” as well as scientific. “It’s not just whether science is being done, but whether it’s science that furthers the interests of the IWC and gives information that is genuinely useful in terms of whale conservation in the future,” says Chris Butler-Stroud of Whale and Dolphin Conservation, in Chippenham, UK.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Tougher whaling rules hit Japan”